Don't Eat Batteries!

Yesterday turned out to be way more excited that I had expected. I had expected to have a fun afternoon swimming in the pool and then going to church after supper. All of that changed when everybody came downstairs after rest time and the first thing Benji said was "Mom, Chris swallowed a battery." Eeek!!!!

Within about 15 minutes I was on my way to Dave's grandma's house to drop off the other kids so Chris and I could make the 45 minute trip to the closest x-ray machine. The x-ray was actually kind of cool. A perfect picture of Chris's neck area, with a perfect circle right in the middle. It looked like there was a hole in the x-ray. At this point I still wasn't too concerned. I was thinking "Give the kid something to make him throw up, we'll get it out and go home." Little did I know.........

So...."Scott" (a doctor? a PA? I'm not sure) came in and said "It needs to come out." Duh???? Getting it out would not be so easy. They needed to put a scope down Chris's throat to get the battery. BTW, the battery was from a toy and was about the size of a quarter.

The town we were in has a new small town type hospital. There was a problem..........the only doctor that could do surgical procedures was on vacation. UGH! This meant that we would have to take him to a bigger hospital, over 2 hours from where we were. And......they had to take him by ambulance.

I guess there was a lot of concern because if the battery moved it could cover the opening of the windpipe and he wouldn't be able to breathe. So in the ambulance we went. The medic in the ambulance warned me that if anything happened I would have to move to the front of the ambulance while he worked on Chris. If Chris started throwing up there was a good chance he would start choking.

About 20 minutes from our destination, Chris started throwing up. Instant panic!!!! But....praise God....the battery came flying out of his mouth. Relief! I now thought......good, we'll get the hospital, meet up with Dave and go home. Nope!

Once at the hospital, the doctor who saw him was very concerned because the battery was very coreded (and it was!). I guess that the stomach acid, when mixed with the battery, causes electrical charges to happen. The doctor was very concerned that this may have done some serious burning to Chris's throat.

After another x-ray to tell us that there was not a hole burnt through his throat the doctor felt a little better. He said that kids often die from those little batteries. He had Chris eat some toast and peanut butter and while it was a little painful for Chris, he ate it all. We were then free to go.

Today Chris's throat is very sore but I don't know if that's from some burning or from just having a big thing stuck in his throat for a few hours.

I'm very thankful that the battery came out safely but please pray that his throat heals quickly and feels better soon.